Problems That May Be Caused By Apple Pie Promises
by the laughing redhead
Summary: Swan Song, 5.22 - A collection of drabbles set during Dean's life between the scene on Lisa's doorstep and the end of Swan Song
1. The Best Things In Life Are Free

**So i watched Swan Song... and i'm a little bitter about this whole thing. To take out my revenge on everything, i have decided to write drabbles to describe Dean's life between the time when he came to Lisa's and the VERY END.**

**THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD: So if you didn't watch 5.22 then i wouldn't recommend reading the following.**

**Thanks to my Beta reader Katrina who put up with these first few, without a word of complaint :)**

**Disclaimer: i haven't actually made one of these before... but i guess if i owned Supernatural, things would be different. Starting with THE END OF SWAN SONG. **

***sighs*  
**

* * *

**When Silence Is Deafening:**

It had been, four weeks since the graveyard.

Four, unbelievably, quiet weeks at Lisa's house.

She had watched him after the first night, carefully beginning to piece the story together.

It wasn't the easiest thing, he didn't talk about it as a rule and it hadn't been long enough for her to pry.

* * *

**Grief, It's What's For Dinner:**

The first night was the outwardly worst for him, .

So She allowed him to be silent, and lost , like a child, and he stayed in her guest bedroom.

Looking confused when she told him to make the bed up the first night, staring dumbly at the sheets in his hands and then back at the daybed.

After slipping into the kitchen to get him some water, she returning to find him curled up on the mattress, shoes still on, sheets clutched in his hands.

The slim brunette thought he was asleep for a moment, until she noticed his shoulders heaving.

She holds him while he weeps until the only coherent noises he can make are empty, airless sobs and coughs.

By the way his voice had rasped when he had arrived at her door and asked her to come in, he had done this more than once on that day.

She waits for him to finish- waits until the sudden wave of grief relaxes just slightly, then sits him up.

He doesn't protest, he doesn't even respond.

The Hunter is numb.

Saying nothing when she kneels at his feet and slips off his muddy boots, trying not to stare too long at what she knows is dried blood on his jeans.

Seizes him by his large calloused palms and leads him to her bedroom; Pulling off his jacket while he stands there numbly.

"Dean..." she calls softly, talking to him like she does to Ben when he is sick and tired out of his mind. "Listen to me Dean. _Dean, look at me_."

His normally green eyes are clouded slightly, but they seem to focus on her when she uses her "mom tone".

"I need you to take your clothes off."  
The faintest trace of the Dean she knew flashes through his eyes; the left side of his mouth lifts just very slightly.

"Tryin 'to seduce me?"

Lisa gives him a wry smile and shakes her head.

"You need a shower." she informs him, attempting to discourage all such thoughts from both their minds. Though it's not as easy as she thought it would be. Especially with him standing there all red-eyed and vulnerable, in his sock feet and rumpled clothes. Lisa starts to feel very warm, hoping that she's not getting sick, but knows somehow that this has nothing to do with physical illness.  
"Mom?"

Ben's sleepy face appears in the doorway, strangely caught between the sparse light of the bedroom and the darkness of the hallway.

Lisa attempts not to sigh too loudly.

She had tried her best to hide Dean when he had showed up halfway through the day.

Ben came in late from a pizza party after the game and she had gotten him to watch TV then go to bed with the usual complaints that came from a ten-year-old.

But being Ben, he had noticed the Impala in the driveway immediately and wanted to know where Dean was.

He still remembered Dean, often bragging to his friend's that he knew the coolest guy of all time.

She had managed to talk him into the fact that Dean was sick, and tired and that Ben could talk to him in the morning.

"Hey Bennie, why are you out of bed?" She she asks, knowing the answer.

"I heard you guys talking...hi," he shyly tells Dean, who panics at the sight of the boy. Barely managing to grin like the old Dean, he keeps careful tether of the emotions that seem to be running rampant in his soul, reasoning that he can't afford to put his problems on the shoulders of a ten year old.

Ben- not realizing the inner turmoil- runs to him in a moment, hugging him tightly and already beginning to chatter.

Breaking off and staring up with a wrinkled nose, he informs him bluntly,

"You smell like a toilet."

Lisa notices the stricken look, the tears rising in his eyes and a look of painful horror crossing his face.

"Ben- , you need to go to sleep, and let Dean get some rest. _Now__,_Benjamin."

Ben notices the tone, and the use of his full name and trundles off to bed, waving sleepily over his shoulder.

* * *

By the time she gets back to her room he is once again in a semi-comatose state. Sitting on the edge of the bed, trying and failing to stop the tears from gushing out.

Lisa can tell that it embarrasses him to cry in general, let alone in front of her. Yet he still manages to fall apart with dignity and she tries her best to let him wear himself out without damaging his obviously vulnerable ego.

Another ten minutes went go by until he manages to empty himself of tears. Reduced to the slight hiccuping noise you make when your mind still wants to grieve, but your body's got nothing left to give.

After he finishes she tries again to start a conversation; this time he doesn't respond. Doesn't even flinch.

So she engages a different tact.

"Dean, go get a shower. It will make you feel better, and you're not sleeping in my bed smelling like you do. _Now__,_Dean."

This seems to somehow cut through the fog he's surrounded himself in. He nods and sniffs once, trudging wearily into the adjoining bathroom, shoulders bowed like he had carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, not even bothering to close the door.

* * *

She sits down on the bed and picked picks up a book, attempting to prepare for the next morning's lesson, though now she isn't sure if he should be left alone in the house in this state and begins to realize that calling in a sick day would be the safest route.

The sound of water running, and the warmth of steam, not to mention the late hour, lulls her confused mind into an easy sleep minutes later.

* * *

A hand on her shoulder jumpstarts her awake. Eyes flying open to find Dean staring numbly down at her, looking cleaner and dressed in what could go for sleeping clothes. Though they have the look of clothes that have been in too many Laundromats, not to mention the sticker he hadn't noticed was still attached to his sleeve that advertised the largest dryers and washers in the county for only $4 each. Another question, another thing he probably won't want to answer.

So instead of sating her lust for information (and other things she's not willing to dwell on right now) Lisa grabs his arm and slides over in the bed, pulling him in next to her.

Settling the covers over both of them, getting used to the warmth of another body in the bed. Sadly enough, it had been far too long.

She starts by letting him have his space and just do whatever he needs to do.

Listens as he shifts restlessly, tossing and turning and fidgeting, until she finally reaches an arm around his chest and moves the other up to tangle in his still wet hair, pulling him close.

He tenses at first, then relaxes into her, molding himself to her shape and she falls asleep like that. Listening to the sound of his awake breathing. Hoping that he will at least try to get some rest, feeling the exhaustion in his body. He outlasts her however, and she slips off.

Lisa wakes in the night to find him curled protectively around her, clutching her like a lifeline, and after moving her head just slightly she finds that he is, in fact, asleep.

The look on his face is far from peaceful.

He calls out for his brother several times throughout the night, scaring her awake, calming when she soothed soothes the hair on his forehead and tells him it's going to be alright, then tells her racing heart the same.

* * *

When her alarm goes off, signaling work time, he isn't there.

A moment of panic, checking the driveway to find the Impala still there, his boots gone from the floor at the end of the bed where she had dropped them.

There was the faintest sound of speech, and the hint of electric light flickering on the walls of the hallway; making her realize that the door to her bedroom was is now open.

She finds him sitting in the living room, numbly watching the television. Obviously seeing nothing, and she leaves him there, because for some reason he needs this.

* * *

**This first one is just some random stuff. Just share if you like it :-))**


	2. Salt Lines And CD Players

**Protect And Serve:**

It was several nights later that she came home from school to find small trails of salt across every doorway.

After a searching the house, she found a pentagram with symbols around it seared into the doormats that she had placed in front of the doors as well as any rug he could find. When she had asked him about it, he had only answered with a single word and a haggard look.

"Protection." A silent begging in his eyes that she be okay with these strange habits.

He actually seemed a little surprised by the salt, and Lisa found that she couldn't imagine a life where laying protection for evil spirits became so common-place that you did it without thinking.

She came to a the point where she understood that the man living in her house was perhaps the bravest on this earth.

That night, when he cried out for Sam, it was in the middle of a dream so violent he woke himself up. And the look on his face when he realized where he was, was indeed heartbreaking.

* * *

**Different Is Not Always Better:**

Two weeks later, he was better. Not good, but slightly better. Albeit strained.

He was actually trying with Ben though, and Ben was still the happy-go-lucky ten year old that he had become attached to three years ago.

Dean was different each time they met, older, less willing to make light of serious things. And there was something dangerously close to true affection for her and her son in his eyes when he thought she wasn't looking. But he still wasn't completely theirs, and Lisa knew that he might never be theirs alone.

Dean still cried himself to sleep most nights, the other nights he'd go out to the Impala when he thought she was asleep and would procure a large bottle of liquor and drink quietly, staring up at the stars until he fell asleep in the back seat or passed out.

Those nights she'd sit on the front porch and keep an eye on him and he would be just drunk enough to not notice, or at least to pretend he didn't.

So she prayed at night, even though she wasn't usually the praying kind- that he would let her bear some of the burden that he carried.

* * *

**Chiming In:**

One day, she came home to find him tinkering with something in the backyard. Upon closer inspection it turned out to be a wind-chime made entirely of cats-eye shells. She didn't ask this time, as he had the same look on his face as when she'd found the salt; by the end of the day, there were two on the back porch, two on the front and one inconspicuously hung on their tree in the backyard where Ben liked to play.

* * *

**What's Lost Can Be Found... Or So They Say:**

They were riding together in the Impala one night; it was just the two of them. Not quite a date, since they weren't quite dating. Was comforting a relationship status?

Motorhead hummed loudly from speakers, warbling in some places where the tapes had run thin after being played year after year.

She smiled at the side of his face,

"You know, they can put a CD player in classic cars without hurting her- you know- so you could join us in the 21st century., It's a nice place here, with the rest of humanity."  
"What did I tell you about the driver picking the music, Sam-"

He jerked, and his eyes widened painfully in pain as he caught himself, and she saw that sudden feeling of soul-crushing darkness that swallows you when you just managed to forget for a second.  
But he doesn't cry, and she reaches up and turns the tape up, almost painfully loud.

Lost in the music.

Or maybe just Lost.

* * *

**Thank you darling Supernatural fans for reading my increasingly depressing drabbles ;-D I labeled it under drama/angst because honestly, since like the third episode of the first season that is pretty much what the show's been about, except for those randomly funny/awesome eps that make you giggle insanely, until the next eps when horribleness falls like the hand of God (often quite literally in this show, hee)**

**Just wondering if any of you know WHY he is hanging chimes made of cats-eye shells outside lisa's house?**

**love and cookies to my fellow fangirls/boys (to the like, 8 of them that are out there)**

**Red**


End file.
